My intuition is that suffering is bad, but sometimes (all things considered) I prefer to suffer in a particular instance (e.g. in service of some other value). In such cases it would be better for my welfare if I did not suffer, but I still prefer to.
I also think that in cases where one voluntarily suffers, then this can reduce the suffering involved. Relatedly, I also imagine that voluntarily experienced pain may lead to less suffering than coerced pain.
It also seems to me that there are cases where we directly want to experience a suffering-involving experience (e.g. watching tragedies and wanting to experience the feeling of tragedy). I think in many of these cases the experience is sad, but also involves (subtle) pleasures and what we want to experience is this combined set of emotions. In some such cases I’m sure people would prefer to experience the distinctive melancholy-pleasure emotion without the suffering valence if they could (but cannot imagine, let alone actually achieve this), and in other cases people would not with to detach the suffering from the emotion set (because they have preferences to have fitting responses to tragedy and so forth). I am sure there are a whole bunch of other factors which explain people propensity to voluntarily watch tragedies though e.g. affective forecasting misfires, instrumental goals like signalling, and feelings of compulsion (tragedies tend to be very salient and so adaptive to pay attention to, even if they entail suffering).
My intuition is that suffering is bad, but sometimes (all things considered) I prefer to suffer in a particular instance (e.g. in service of some other value). In such cases it would be better for my welfare if I did not suffer, but I still prefer to.
I also think that in cases where one voluntarily suffers, then this can reduce the suffering involved. Relatedly, I also imagine that voluntarily experienced pain may lead to less suffering than coerced pain.
It also seems to me that there are cases where we directly want to experience a suffering-involving experience (e.g. watching tragedies and wanting to experience the feeling of tragedy). I think in many of these cases the experience is sad, but also involves (subtle) pleasures and what we want to experience is this combined set of emotions. In some such cases I’m sure people would prefer to experience the distinctive melancholy-pleasure emotion without the suffering valence if they could (but cannot imagine, let alone actually achieve this), and in other cases people would not with to detach the suffering from the emotion set (because they have preferences to have fitting responses to tragedy and so forth). I am sure there are a whole bunch of other factors which explain people propensity to voluntarily watch tragedies though e.g. affective forecasting misfires, instrumental goals like signalling, and feelings of compulsion (tragedies tend to be very salient and so adaptive to pay attention to, even if they entail suffering).